Cruising the Lake and River (part 1)

Chicago! 😊😊

You know how much I love going to Chicago!! 😊😊

You know how much I love to take photos of Chicago!! 😊😊

You also know that most of the time I walk around Chicago!! 😊😊

But to truly appreciate the city's skyline one has to occasionaly take a tour of Chicago!! 😊😊

In this case a tour taken on the water.

The best tour?

The Lake and River Architectural Tour.

The tour is apparoximately 90 minutes give or take, (depending how long you wait at the lock) and starts on the dock located in the heart of Chicago's Magnificent Mile.

The first 30 minutes is spent traveling along the Chicago River admiring the buildings, while listening to the guide present architectual backgrounds of each building in sight.  

 

(Gethin, file this under must do, as well 😉)

 

I am not going to be a tour guide on this post and regurgitate the information the guide presented.

Instead I am just going to let you see what I saw.

Once down the the river we came up to the Chicago Harbor Lock Control House and had to wait.  

 

 

A little background information about the lock is needed here.

"The lock, operated and owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, can be navigated 24 hours per day, seven days a week. The lock sees about 40,000 commercial and recreational boats a year, requiring the locks themselves to open about 17,000 times.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has commissioned a phased renovation of the locks and lock facilities. Phase one was building a new control house to create a control operation facility, as well as office, maintenance and storage spaces.

The $5.5 million building, which opened in October 2007, may become another wonder in Chicago because of its shape and design. Architects at CTE AECOM, Chicago, designed the facility to resemble a ship. The design obviously was inspired by the facility's nautical purpose and environment, and using zinc panels helped create the ship look. The ship-like building also was a creative way to construct on a 40-foot- (12-m-) wide site.

 Functionality of the control house was vita to operating the locks. The control operation facility takes up the entire second floor and glass tower. This provides a 270-degree view of the harbor. In addition, the tower is tilted and the desks are glass so engineers have an open view of the locks below. 

The control house features 9,000 square feet (836 m2) of 0.16-inch (4-mm) Reynobond Zinc Composite Material from Alcoa Architectural Products, Eastman, Ga. The material has a FR Core with a skin thickness of 0.03 inch (0.7 mm) and skin alloy of RHEINZINK Titanium Zinc with a preweathered finish. The RHEIZINK material is from RHEINZINK America Inc., Cambridge, Mass."

"The Chicago Harbor lock is one of two entrances from the Great Lakes to the Illinois Waterway System. The other entry is the Thomas J. O'Brien Lock on the Calumet River. The lock was originally designed and built between 1936 and 1938 by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRDGC). The lock was constructed as a component of the historic engineering project that reversed the flow of the Chicago River to prevent river water containing sewage from flowing into the lake and contaminating the city's drinking water."

In no time we went from the first floor (the water level of the Chicago River) to the fifth floor (water level of Lake Michigan) and we were on our way to cruise the lake.

Photos of the other side of the lock will follow in part 2.

(source) 

(source)